the desert flower
by Lossie
Summary: Hana Uzumaki wanted to get away from her golden cage. Konoha was all nice and dandy, but it was boring. She wanted an adventure and, as Fate would have it, she was going to get more than she had bargained for. Eventual GaaraOC, other pairings mentioned. Rated T for language
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Well, I never thought I would be writing that story. Not at all. Through Hana Uzumaki is actually one of my oldest OCs, I originally wanted to put her into a completely different plotline. Life is full of surprises, I guess.  
Anyway, I should be able to post a chapter once or twice a week – as per usual, it largely depends on my muse and the amount of free time I'll have, but I'll try my best.  
I hope you'll enjoy reading the story even half as much as I enjoy writing it. :)

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**Chapter 1**

Sand was everywhere. Literally. And in places she definitely didn't want it to get into. It was scratching against what little exposed skin there was and she stopped paying attention to the utter discomfort of sandpits in her shoes a long time ago. If that wasn't bad enough, there was also the sun, which seemed strangely determined to bake her alive.

Through they were resting now and sitting in a make-shift tent to shield them from the sun during their break, she could still feel the heat radiating from all around her. Resisting the urge to sigh, she took another sip from her water container.

For the nth time in the last few days, she was seriously questioning her sanity. Why she agreed to go to Suna in the first place was completely beyond her. She surely didn't think it through and was already regretting that decision. The problem was, she couldn't back down now. She, and a team that was accompanying her there, where already a few hours away from the village. Besides she didn't even want to think of the gleeful expression on her brother's face if she came back with her tail tucked between her legs – he would be laughing his ass off for the next decade and she was so not going to let it happen. Truth be told, it gave her an unimaginable amount of satisfaction that she got so far away from Konoha without complaining even once. At least not out loud. It has been so long since she had been allowed outside, the stupid journey was almost worth it. Almost.

"Hana-san, are you okay?"

She looked at the nin, whose name she didn't even remember, and smiled slightly. He was a newbie jounin and apparently scared that he would offend her in some way if he said or did something out of line. It was actually the first time she could recall him addressing her.

"Yes, I'm fine, through I think the heat is starting to get to me." She replied after a moment. "Thank you for your concern, nin-san."

"Em, my name is Ume, ma'am." He bowed his head and she couldn't help but chuckle at his obvious discomfort.

"How far are we from Suna, Ume-san?"

The man blinked at her stupidly, as if he wasn't expecting her to actually address him by his name, before mumbling something unintelligent under his breath about checking on the camel and the next second he was gone.

Why were people so damn uncomfortable around her? The other members of the team also looked as if they wanted to be somewhere else. It wasn't like she was going to bite them or something, for Kami's sake!

It was a pity that all of her friends were conveniently on missions far away from Leaf when Naruto had asked her if she would like to go to Suna as an ambassador and maybe do some good for the medic nins over there. It was apparently a part of the peace treaty between the two villages. Usually, it was Sakura who got sent out on this type of assignments, but due to the fact she was away and wouldn't be back for at least another week or two, Hana was asked instead.

While she could understand her brother's reasoning, she couldn't quite grasp why was he sending her?

For real, the man was so overprotective that he wouldn't let her go on any mission above D rank and here he was now, sending her not only out of the village, but out of the country and on an A rank, to top it all. It didn't make sense.

Maybe he had finally realized that while yes, her name meant flower, she wasn't exactly going to wither without him breathing down her neck every waking moment?

Most likely, Sakura was finally able to drill some sense into him and then gave him no choice when she accepted the mission which collided with her annual trips to Suna. Sakura was never sloppy and either she did it on purpose, or it was just Naruto being his usual erratic self. For some reason, she strongly suspected the former.

Ever since they were children, Hana wasn't allowed to wander outside of the village. Her unique abilities, while very useful, where also extremely dangerous. She never associated being a chakra sensor with danger before her accident. Too much stimuli, combined with not enough control over her powers, had landed her in the hospital. She was in a coma for two weeks and she knew that it scared her brother. She and Naruto were twins, but he was always treating her as if she was his younger sibling. She knew he wanted to protect her from all harm. Through it wasn't really possible in the ninja world, she appreciated the sentiment. The accident scared both of them. It also made the Hokage very worried. When he had visited her in the hospital shortly after she woke up, he had told her that her abilities were much stronger than he anticipated and it would be foolish to send her on missions, at least for the time being – she could so easily die if she got too distracted and she knew very well it could happen. It already did. Sensing the chakra of all the shinobi in Konoha at once had almost killed her. She wasn't even aware she was doing it, when she had got distracted enough to lose balance and to hit her head so hard, she had fractured her skull.

Of course she had honed her skills to perfection since then, but she had also discovered that her abilities where slightly unpredictable and she learnt something new about them almost every day. It was never a good combination, but here she was now, going to Suna, even though it was probably a recipe for disaster.

"Hana-san?" She looked at the only female on the team, other than herself – a woman with one eye, who struck her as a little too self-obsessed, but who was nice and capable enough. They got along quite well, even though she was obviously aware of Hana's abilities, at least some of them, and it made her quite jumpy. Chakra sensors usually made people wary, but those three teammates of hers were simply hilarious.

Hana was petite and below average in height, with long ginger blond hair and sky blue eyes. She was always all smiles, so it didn't make any sense for people to walk on eggshells around her. Even with a Kage for a brother, she was still pretty harmless. Or rather she didn't mean any harm. Plus she was a medic nin and she didn't even like to fight. Not that anyone was aware of or even remotely interested about it.

Some people were simply very strange.

"Yes?"

"We should get going if we want to reach Suna before the nightfall."

Hana looked up into the bright desert sky, clearly visible between the flaps of their tent, and sighed. If she didn't die of boredom, irritation or the combination of both – at this rate everything seemed possible – she would surely die because of a heat stroke, but what else could she do now, other than move forward?

"Oh, of course. Let's go then."

The two men packed the tent in silence and then put it on the camel's back, where the rest of their equipment was already secured. They started walking again, with Hana in the middle with Ume-san as her silent companion.

It'll only take a few more hours and you'll be able to talk to someone remotely sane, she thought, suppressing a huff of annoyance. While she wasn't good friends with the Sand siblings, she liked them enough and Temari was actually quite awesome – she could easily envision herself and the Sand kunoichi becoming friends in the future.

Hana Uzumaki was a tough cookie and she could deal with the idiots surrounding her for now. She just prayed to whoever was kind enough to listen that she wouldn't have to see them again after this journey was over for a very, very long time.

-o-o-o-

She was going to murder Naruto. Or even better, she would just slap him, hard, and then leave the beating to Sakura. And then she would strangle him. How someone so irresponsible could be a Hokage was simply incomprehensible.

They'd arrived in Suna well after nightfall, positively dead on their feet. Personally, Hana felt dirty, sweaty and overall disgusting, and was hoping for a nice cold shower to wash all of that down.

Sadly, her idiot of a brother apparently forgot to send a memo and no one was expecting them. It had lead to a very awkward conversation with the gate guards who had refused to let them into the village. They tried to argue, but it was futile, so in the end they were forced to wait for one of the guards to come back with an escort. Almost an hour later he arrived with a girl named Matsuri, who turned out to be the Kazekage's secretary and his former student. She was really nice, but by this point, Hana was so irritated that she was already formulating the funeral speech for her soon-to-be late brother.

"I'm truly sorry, Matsuri-san. My brother is hardly a walking example of maturity and his organization skills are greatly lacking." Hana smiled apologetically at Matsuri as they finally started to make their way inside the village. The girl returned the gesture with a dismissive shrug of her shouldrs.

"It's no problem," she responded, glancing at Hana over her shoulder, her hands full of documents she had picked up from the gate guards only a moment ago. "Actually, it's quite possible that the messenger bird got lost in the recent sandstorm. It happens all the time, believe me, so it's nothing new for us. Horribly problematic, yes, but not new at all!"

"Okay...," Hana murmured, uncertain if she should believe the girl. It felt awfully like they were a burden to everyone involved in the situation. Not to mention that she actually needed to go and see the Kazekage now, when it was clearly past any reasonable working hours.

The sky was already dark. The temperature has dropped greatly over the last two hours, which was a relief after the scalding heat they were forced to endure for the entire day. Everything was oddly quiet, which gave an impression that the city was already asleep, even though it was not that late and the streets were actually lit quite brightly by small lanterns. The first thing Hana had noticed about Suna was the fact that not everything was made out of sand, nor was it all in various shades of brown. There was a lot of greenery, if you looked close enough. She vaguely remembered Sakura mentioning that the village was the only oasis this close to the borders. The other ones – along with some smaller cities – were strewn across the Wind country and located much deeper into the desert.

She made a mental note to ask someone to give her a tour tomorrow, because it looked like the village could prove to be quite fascinating.

Then again everything would pass as fascinating to her, since the only place outside of her home village she had ever been to was a civilian town a few miles away that wasn't actually that different from Konoha. It was pretty sad and pathetic, considering that she was twenty three years old.

They were quiet for most of the surprisingly long walk from the gates to the Kazekage Tower, but the closer they got to the city centre, the more people they passed by, which meant that there was some form of nightlife going on. Through they stayed away from the actual market squares and the likes, since it wasn't apparently en route, it was still nice to see some new faces. Even people here looked different. Their skin was much darker than any of the average Konoha citizen, their hair was usually some shade of brown and the men here were most defiantly taller – the ones they've passed towered over Hana, not that it was a particularly difficult feat to accomplish.

This automatically brought her thoughts to Temari's brothers. She had never had the opportunity to talk with them, but Sakura was an exceptionally good source of any and all information. Kankuro, the older one, was a shameless womanizer and a troublemaker. He was loud, obnoxious and very talkative, but could be serious, when the situation called for it. He and his sister were quite similar, minus the womanizer part of his personality. Gaara, on the other hand, was the silent type. Sakura never got around to spend much time with him, since he was usually busy with all the Kage stuff, but he seemed a little emotionally handicapped and socially awkward. Hana couldn't exactly blame him.

Gaara's and Naruto's childhoods were similar. They were both lonely kids who grew up to be lonely boys, craving for affection and acceptance from others. Naruto was lucky enough to have Hana for a sibling and his bubbly personality didn't hurt either. After some serious struggles, he had finally managed to prove himself to his teammates and then his peers, gaining their trust and friendship. From what Sakura had told her, no one ever stood up for Gaara until Naruto came into the picture during the Chunnin exams all those years ago. It made her heart clench painfully every time she thought about it.

She was pretty sure she was forgetting about some important detail Sakura had mentioned, but her friend always had too many things to say about her trips abroad and not nearly enough time, so she tended to speak incredibly fast. In the end Hana was usually left with bits and pieces instead of a whole story.

Thankfully she didn't have time or the opportunity to ponder about it, because they've finally arrived and before any of them had a chance to even think about opening the double doors, they swung open.

"Well, that's a surprise," Temari said with one eyebrow raised as she eyed the group in front of her. After a few seconds of rather uncomfortable silence, she turned to Matsuri. "What are you doing here, mousey?"

"I, um, I was... I just..." The girl appeared to have lost all of her confidence and her voice was a bit shaky, as if she was afraid of Temari for some reason. After Matsuri made a series of unintelligent noises that couldn't be interpreted to actual words, it became obvious Temari's limited supply of patience was running out and Hana decided to step in.

"Matsuri-san, the papers?" She murmured and the girl snapped out of her babbling only to all but shove the papers at Temari and then she almost made a run for it, while saying 'sorry' over and over again.

Hana, as well as the rest of her team, was beyond confused. She gave Temari a questioning look, but the woman's only response to the inquiry was a dramatic sigh.

"Don't mind her," she said after a moment, looking down at the rumpled documents in her arms with distaste as if they were a personal offense of some sort. "Anyway, you must be tired. Sorry about the whole bureaucratic shit. Those stupid birds can't even do their own damn job. Plus the weather was so crazy... That's Suna for you, I guess."

Hana chuckled.

"Well," she cracked a smile at them. "I bet you want to sleep, huh? You can meet with the Kazekage tomorrow morning, I guess..."

"Oh, that won't be necessary!" Hana interrupted her with a sheepish smile. "They," there she gestured to her comrades," will be going back to Konoha first thing in the morning. They were only my escort here, so to speak. I'll be the only one staying. We can go now, if it's okay."

Temari blinked at her before nodding her head and promptly yelling for someone to come immediately. Hana winced at the volume. That woman had a pair of impressively strong lungs. A moment later a young nin appeared outside, his expression calm and collected as if he was completely used to the screaming. Well, knowing Temari, he probably was. The woman in question instructed him to show Hana's teammates their sleeping quarters. Then she gestured for Hana to follow her inside.

After saying a quick goodbye and wishing them a safe journey back home, she did just that.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Hi there. Sorry for the delay, but I got stuck at the begining of chapter 3 and wanted to overcome my teeny-tiny writer's block. I was worried that if I posted this chapter before I could put something together for the next one, I would be stuck for longer or permanently.  
Anyway, I hope you'll like this chapter, even though it's still too early into the plot for anything major to happen. It will come soon enough.  
Please enjoy and leave a comment - I love hearing from my readers. It never fails to make me smile! :)

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**Chapter 2**

Naruto was everything Hana was not. When they were still kids and attending Academy, they often found themselves on the Hokage Monument, swapping tales.

Naruto liked to talk since an early age. He had always been very outspoken and, while Hana was not shy by any means, she just didn't have his overwhelming confidence. His favourite tales were about how the village would be when he finally became the Hokage. Sometimes they were borderline silly, other times entertaining and funny. He seemed especially keen to make a big deal out of those stolen moments of peace and quiet when she was sad. It happened all the time. Kids were cruel and they often made fun of Naruto, which in turn made her want to cry. She knew that it hurt her brother more than he let on.

When he finally achieved his dream at the age of nineteen, Hana couldn't have been happier.

Of course being a Kage was as far from their childish musings as possible. She found it laughable that none of Naruto's tales of greatness and honour matched up with the mountains upon mountains of unfinished paperwork. Stacks of it were covering every surface in her brother's office until he saw reason and decided to get help. Sasuke wasn't thrilled about the prospect of being his best friend's right hand, but he still agreed. Between the two of them – and the occasional third party when someone capable was free and willing to offer – they were able to deal with the not-so-idyllic workload.

Looking at the inside of the Kazekage's office, Hana highly doubted anyone ever offered the much needed help. It was a war zone. Papers were literally everywhere, even on the windowsills, and the great Gaara of the Desert was looking dangerously close to falling asleep were he sat behind the desk.

"I told you to go home two hours ago!" Hana winced as Temari yelled, her face turning fifty shades of purple in fury. "I swear, you're a stone idiot sometimes! Go. Home. Now."

Hana decided to take a few steps away from the Sand kunoichi, in case she would spontaneously combust with anger. She dared a glance in the Kazekage's direction only to be met with his piercing eyes looking directly into hers.

His eyes were a really nice shade of mint green.

Mentally slapping herself for her stupid, stupid thoughts – bad Hana, bad! – she came to the conclusion that her mind was finally catching up with her tired body. It was the only logical explanation. Or the only logical explanation she was willing to accept at the moment.

Temari wasn't done with yelling just yet. The woman was calling her little brother every single synonymous of the words irresponsible and stupid. She could only giggle under her breath at the man's passive disposition. He was obviously used to it.

Being a sister of a Kage wasn't easy. She knew it from personal experience. It was the constant game of trying and failing to drill into said Kage's head that the world was not going to collapse because he decided to take better care of himself. Greater good wasn't worth digging yourself an early grave.

When Temari was finally done with her reprimand, she took her time to glare at the man before she huffed in annoyance and dropped the subject. At least for now.

"The Konoha ambassador has arrived with her escort," Temari said and both woman watched as Gaara froze with his hand over some document, the ink from his brush dripping onto the paper, and then looked up, glancing between them.

"Yes, I've noticed."

His voice was much deeper than Naruto's and not what she was expecting. It was rough, but warm and quiet. Really easy on the ears, if someone would want to know her opinion.

"No shit," Temari snorted and Gaara lifted an nonexistent eyebrow, which was probably as close to him saying 'What's your problem' as he could get. "Well, since you give no flying shit about what I say anyway, I will leave you with your stupid papers."

She turned on her heel and was practically at the door, with Hana close behind, when she abruptly turned around.

"And for Kami's sake, find yourself a fucking assistant! This place looks like a brothel!"

Dangerously close to bursting out laughing at any moment, Hana bowed respectfully with a murmured 'Have a good night, Kazekage-sama'. She exited the office, closing the door behind her, and hurried after Temari, who was already half way down the hall.

"That was... _loud_," she said, when she finally managed to catch up to her. "Not that I'm not used to the loudness – Naruto is my brother, after all. But it was still pretty damn impressive, if you ask me."

The blond heaved a sigh.

"It would be more impressive if it actually worked one of these days," she mumbled with resignation, slowing down slightly. "Sometimes I swear he is doing it on purpose just to spite me."

"You can never be too sure."

"Actually, I can. Gaara is... He is not good at social interactions." So Sakura's estimation of the man has been correct, after all. Interesting. "Which makes it even more irritating, if that's even possible."

"Oh believe me, I know." Temari gave her a sceptical look. "My brother, remember?"

The older woman facepalmed herself rather hard on the forehead.

"I forgot, sorry. Hana, right?"

"Yes."

"Are you older, younger...?"

"We're twins, actually."

"Really?" She gave Hana a onceover. It wasn't an uncommon reaction. They didn't look much alike now. "You don't look similar."

"Oh , we did when we were kids," she said with a smile as they exited the building and made their way down the street. "Now I'm like a head shorter than he is, so you would have to be blind to mistake us, but it had happened a few times in the past."

"Must've been weird, huh?"

"Yeah. Nothing makes your day better than a thoughtful scolding for some stupid prank simply because you kind of look like the culprit."

They both laughed at that.

"You're probably wondering where you will be staying?" Temari asked after a moment of silence. From what Hana could gather by the increasing noise, they were nearing the centre of the village. She nodded. The thought had indeed crossed her mind a few times. "The Council suggested the quarters in the Tower, but they're smelly and in an urgent need of renovation, so I said 'Why not the guest room in our house? The one Sakura uses every time she is in Suna' and Gaara backed me up. It will be so nice to have another woman around! Too much testosterone in the air, you understand."

Living with two brothers was probably tough. Just thinking about sharing a house with two Narutos made her cringe mentally.

"You're sure I won't be intruding or a burden to you? It's not as if I know when I'll be coming back to Konoha, so..."

"Don't be ridiculous." Temari interrupted her midsentence. "As I said, it would be nice to have you around. Sakura only visits for roughly a month every year, I'm not in Konoha that often anymore and besides, it's not like I have any female friends here in Suna."

"Really?" Hana was truly flabbergasted. Temari was such a quirky and easygoing person it was hard to imagine that she wasn't surrendered by a group of friends. It was almost as hard as imagining Ino in the same situation – simply impossible. "What about Matsuri-san?"

At that Temari simply started to laugh. After one or two deep breaths she was finally able to say something even remotely resembling words, instead of uncontrollable snorts and huffs.

"Are you kidding? That whimp? Please!" The blond shook her head with amusement still clearly visible in her eyes. "First of all, she is afraid of me. You could see it yourself today, actually. Secondly, she has a crush on my baby brother. Lastly, I just don't like her."

"If you put it that way..."

"Don't get me wrong," she started to explain. "It's not because she's weak, even though she kind of is," Hana raised an eyebrow at that, "What? She is! But that's not what I'm trying to say. The main reason is that she is way too clingy and she irritates the hell out of me."

"Because she likes your brother or because she is like a monkey?"

"A bit of both, to be honest." She cringed and Hana couldn't hold back a snort of laughter.

"So if I want to stay on your good side, I shouldn't be overly friendly with either of your brothers and refer from teasing you, is that correct?"

"Ha ha, very funny." She gave Hana a stinky eye. "I already like you. You're more fun than I expected. Plus you're not afraid of me, which is always a bonus."

"Should I be afraid of you?"

"Nah. I play nice. Most of the time."

They stopped talking for a moment since they arrived to what Hana suspected was the house the Kazekage shared with his siblings. Temari gave her a grand tour around, showing her were everything was, in case she would need something when no one would be home, and then she dropped her off at the guest bedroom. They wished each other good night and Temari promised to wake her up in the morning for breakfast.

After unpacking the bag she had sealed in a scroll and putting her things in the wardrobe, she made her way to the bathroom. Taking a shower never felt so nice. The water was mildly warm, which helped easing the tension in her muscles. She was pretty sure she would be close to immobile tomorrow.

When she was done cleaning herself up, she slowly returned to her bedroom. She all but collapsed on the bed and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

-o-o-o-

The night was unusually windy – most probably an aftermath of the recent sandstorm. He could hear the sand scrapping against the window of his bedroom and the whistle of the wind was too loud to be ignored. It wasn't uncommon. Even if Suna was an oasis amongst the unforgiving wasteland, the weather left vast room for improvement, especially the volume of it. Honestly, who could sleep with a whistling contest going outside? You'd have to be deaf.

Sighing in defeat and deciding that he wouldn't be going back to sleep any time soon, Gaara sat up in his bed and rubbed his aching eyes. He then glanced at the clock – it was barely three in the morning. So he had got around four hours of rest, which wasn't actually that bad. After years of little to none sleep, he was fighting insomnia and every time he miraculously managed to fall asleep was considered an improvement. It seemed that after the Fourth Shinobi War his sleeping patterns had become significantly better – a very good thing, for sure.

After Temari left his office, Naruto's sister in tow, Gaara had a hard time going back to work. Not only because he was in fact really exhausted and tempted to already go home to rest, but because he couldn't, for some unfathomable reason, stop himself from thinking about Hana Uzumaki.

He had had an opportunity to meet her a few times. She was quiet, polite and overall very pleasant to be around. It didn't hurt that she was easy on the eye. Through he never had a longer conversation with her, he knew that the woman was quite a spitfire and a force to be reckoned, her character supposedly similar to that of her late mother, Kushina. But the thing that seemed permanently engraved into the back of his mind's eye was the absolutely honest smile she gave him when she and Temari had entered his office. She had also looked amused by his sister's behaviour and didn't appear to be even remotely cautious around him.

War hero or not, Kazekage or not, people were still somewhat reluctant to approach him. Of course they admired him – he supposed they had a good enough reason for that – but there was a void between him and the rest of the world. Some days it was smaller, some days it got bigger, but the fact remained that it was constantly in the way. It wasn't filled with fear or resentment as it had been years before, but Gaara couldn't help but wonder if the people's respect and silent awe were any better. No matter what he did to try and make the distance less visible, less tangible, it never worked as well as he hoped it would.

That childish longing for affection was something he was ashamed of, but couldn't help.

He would be the last to complain about his horrible childhood, because he strongly believed that the past should stay in the past, but he sometimes let himself ponder about the endless what-ifs. Being a bogeyman for well over a decade probably made him come up as unapproachable, to say the least. No doubt his position as the Kage only added to that image and didn't make it any easier for people to see him as a human being.

Standing up from the bed, he put on a robe to shake off the penetrating cold of the desert night. There was no point in staying in bed when he could very well start on the papers he had brought home the previous night. With that in mind, he made his way to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.

As he passed by the guestroom, he once again thought about Hana's laughing blue eyes. Even though she had respectfully called him 'Kazekage-sama' on her way out of his office, he could detect her badly concealed amusement. It was refreshing – the thought of someone daring enough to laugh at him.

_Please, she is the most important person in my life. Take care of her for me..._ – Naruto's words from a week ago echoed loud and clear in his mind, and his good mood was gone almost instantly. He couldn't get distracted. Naruto entrusted Hana's safety to him and he would be damned if he let something happen to her. Not only for Naruto's sake, but for his own as well. He was pretty sure Naruto wouldn't hesitate to skin him alive, if he failed.

Besides, she was a mystery he had found himself wanting to solve.


End file.
